Boring stacks last

Most of the projects I'm still proud of are the ones I built with as little tooling as I could get away with.

There's a quiet luxury in writing a project that doesn't need a build step, a framework upgrade, or a config file to keep working. A handful of HTML files and a stylesheet, served as-is, will outlive almost anything fancier you put next to it.

What you give up, and what you get back

You give up the conveniences of a framework: components, hot reload, the ecosystem. You get back the ability to open the project in five years and have it work without thinking about it. For most personal sites, that's a trade worth making twice.